Swimming Naked With Beluga Whales [Science]

These extraordinary pictures show a naked woman attempting to tame two beluga whales in a unique experiment. It was deemed necessary for Russian diver Natalia Avseenko, 36, to strip for the unusual assignment as marine experts believe belugas do not like to be touched by artificial material like diving suits. So Natalia bravely took the plunge into the sea as the temperature in the water touched minus 1.5 centigrade. The belugas, famed for the apparent way in which their faces are able to convey expressions, seemed to like the experience, frolicking for all they were worth. The taming of the belugas happened in the Murmansk Oblast region in the far north-west of Russia at the shore of the White Sea near the polar circle at a branch of the Utrish Dophinarium. An area of the sea is bordered to stop whales and dolphins getting out and instructors tame the mammals before they are transported to dolphinariums around the world. The whales pictured are named Nilma and Matrena. Belugas have a small hump on their heads used for echo-location and it was thought that there would be more chance of striking up a rapport or communicating with them without clothes on.

According to the Russian Emergency Service the average human could die if left in sub-zero temperature sea water for just five minutes. However, Natalia spent ten minutes 40 seconds in the water with no obvious ill effects. A yoga practitioner, she used meditation techniques and was able to hold her breath for ten minutes underwater.

Not Allowed To Look At Nudity? Bubbling’s May Be The Answer [Censorship, Science]

This article was taken from FinalMile:

I recently came across this thread by UltimusMormon. The problem with him is that being a Mormon, he is forbidden from looking at porn or nudity. So, he gets creative with this new concept called Bubbling.

While UltimusMormom might get vicarious pleasures from bubbling scantily clad women and make them really look naked, his human brain is the real accomplice in this act.

For example, as this recent Scientific American article describes it, if we’re looking at a dog standing behind a picket fence, we do not see several slices of the dog, but a single dog that is partially hidden behind opaque vertical slats. Similarly, looking at these bubbled pictures, our brain joins these several pieces of the beautiful ladies into a perceptual whole (read naked beautiful ladies). This ability is what scientists have coined as Amodal Completion.

Our retinal image might contain only fragments, but the brain’s visual system links them, reconstructing the object, so that we can recognize what we see.

This perceptual phenomenon requires no thoughtful consideration. Our visual system establishes the continuity of an object and it’s contours when the object is partially obscured.

That is the difference between seeing and knowing.

Various illusionary experiments by eminent scientists in the field of Vision Sciences further corroborate the fact that this amodal completion ability of the brain is not only about filling in contours to create a perceptual whole…

…Our visual system is more evolved. The key goal of vision is to detect objects (not merely contours), using any information that happens to be available.

This probably evolved from the earlier ages when, even a pair of cold eyes looking at us through the jungle bushes told us we were being preyed on. Amodal completion might have kicked in as a means of survival, and it’s been stored in our brains ever since.

But it seems our friend, UltimusMormon, is using this ability pretty well to slightly bend the rules and yet maintain his ethics. He looks like he knows what he is doing.



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SOURCE: FinalMile